Al Rajhi Banking and Investment Corporation launches Kingdom's largest Oracle-Based Customer Relationship Management effort

The operational CRM effort currently gives more than 850 of Al Rajhi's customer service representatives a 'telesales dashboard' that displays all of a client's interactions with the bank, identifying customer value, cross-selling opportunities, and service requirements.

Al Rajhi selected Oracle CRM to meet three key objectives: improve competitiveness in the Kingdom's increasingly deregulated financial sector, understand and enhance customer profitability, and standardize customer service levels for increased satisfaction. Ultimately, Al Rajhi will deploy Oracle CRM at more than 375 branches and throughout its call center, integrating the bank's face-to-face, telephone and online service efforts, as well as its marketing strategy. Al Rahji's CRM implementation is also tied to its deployment of Oracle Financial Services Applications, specifically designed for banks and financial institutions, and the company's data warehousing and analytical strategies.

"Al Rajhi now has a complete picture in terms of our customer interaction process. Using the analytical power of Oracle's solutions, we can now take advantage of every single customer interaction to improve satisfaction, cross-sell new services through Oracle Telesales, keep track of all requests through Oracle TeleService, and gauge our marketing effectiveness and the impact of the overall CRM effort on Al Rajhi's bottom line," stated Saeed Al Ghamdi, Deputy General Manager, Al Rajhi Bank.

"More fully understanding customers' needs and improving both the speed of service and the business intelligence around it are all directly linked to attracting and retaining our most valuable clients, which in turn boosts Al Rajhi's overall profitability," he added. The bank recently reported a 49.5% rise in profits for the first six months of 2004, compared to the same period last year. Al Rajhi Corporation posted a net profit of SR1.368 billion ($364.8 million) in the first half of 2004.

Supporting Unique Regional Requirements
A deciding factor in the software implementation was the way that Oracle's offering catered to the unique needs of Al Rajhi's organization. In the increasingly mobile Saudi market, customers can now receive SMS texts from Al Rajhi that automatically update them on service requests. Language considerations were paramount for the success of Al Rajhi's CRM effort - the solution catered for localized Arabic terminology and dialects while fully supporting both English and traditional Arabic for the bank's customers, as well as its sales and service staff.

Following the comprehensive roll-out of the Oracle sales, service, and marketing CRM modules across Al Rajhi's network, the bank will begin streamlining its back-office operations through the implementation of Oracle Procurement, Oracle Financials, and Oracle Human Resources Management System (HRMS). Oracle's Middle East-based consulting team will continue to manage the deployment of Al Rajhi's new software.

"I believe Al Rajhi has achieved a number of 'firsts' for the Saudi banking community through this Oracle deployment. We now have greater customer segmentation and analysis capabilities than probably any financial services provider in the GCC, and our new CRM deployment enables Al Rajhi to actually capitalize immediately on the customer opportunities we identify. The level of detail and responsiveness in our customer service - all interactions with our clients - will be unsurpassed," concluded Al Ghamdi.